


when i run a fever, you bring the cold water

by misura



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: M/M, Sickfic, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-26 03:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12547332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: Adam comes down with a cold. Tony comes down with love. (They find each other in the middle.)





	when i run a fever, you bring the cold water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geri_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geri_chan/gifts).



Adam comes down with a cold, which is a mild inconvenience for everyone except Adam, who all but requires someone to sit on him to keep him confined to his room (Tony experiences a guilty fantasy of doing exactly that, before rationality sets in).

"We'll be fine," Tony assures him on the day he'll later mark on his calendar as Day 1.

"Seriously, I'm okay," says Adam. "I'm fine. See? I can stand. I can - "

(He's wearing pajamas, which he's put on himself, and Tony feels that he should feel guiltier about wishing it were otherwise, about wishing he could have done something innocent and platonic and caring for Adam which would also have involved being allowed to touch him and see what the years have done to the rest of Adam's body.)

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

Adam rolls his eyes. "Oh, now that's mature. C'mon, Tony."

"Sleep," Tony commands, and in all the years, months, weeks and days he's known Adam, it has never been like this between them. They've never been in a place where Tony can tell Adam to do something and know, trust that it will be done exactly as he's ordered it to be done.

Adam grumbles a bit before he lies back down and goes to sleep.

 

This, too, is new: a kitchen full of people, anxiously awaiting word of Adam.

Not entirely new, perhaps, but back in Paris, it was always anxiety for what Adam might have done, or drunk, or whom he might have fucked, or offended, or picked a fight with - and Tony was never the first to know, the one to bring the news.

"It's just a cold," says Tony. "He'll be fine. A few days."

He'll talk to Helene later, see if they can cover for Adam that long, if any adjustments to the menu are required. (Tony thinks not, but then, he's only the maitre'd. He doesn't know kitchens and food the way Adam does, the way Helene does. He'll always stand apart from them, a little bit, because of that.)

 

"You know I'd cook for you, right?" says Adam.

Tony's brought water and tea and five flavors of juice, because he just doesn't know what types of drinks Adam likes nowadays. (He could list Adam's top-ten of alcoholic beverages no problem, but this new, responsible and sober Adam still has some mysteries for Tony to discover.)

_You mean, cook for me instead of falling in love with me?_

"I know," he says. "I'm not a chef."

"You're not a waiter, either. This is good. I like this."

"Helene made it," says Tony. Helene has received another job offer, and this one, Tony thinks, she might accept, coming as it does from the owner of the restaurant employing her former and future husband. He'll miss her, though not as much as Adam will.

People like Adam, they need a few people around who love them without being blind to their many flaws and faults, and Tony knows that try as he might, he's already lost at least part of his objectivity when it comes to Adam. Again.

"Helene should have her own kitchen," says Adam. "She deserves it."

Tony doesn't argue, even though he believes, deep down inside, that hardly anybody ever gets what they deserve, because if that's not how the world works, if most people _do_ get what they deserve, then that would mean that at some point, he's done something to make him deserve falling in love with Adam Jones, eternal screw-up, and that quite simply is not the case.

 

Helene kisses his cheek and tells him, "Oh, Tony," and there's a smile in her voice and on her face, and Tony wants to believe that it's because she knows something he doesn't, but the truth is, he's known Adam far longer than she does. It's naivety talking, optimism and hope, not realism.

"Oh, Tony, what?" he asks, because he remembers. It's not a bad memory. He likes Helene, even if she and Adam didn't work out in the end - or perhaps because of that, since Tony knows himself well enough to realize that he is not a saint.

"Come tell me what you think of this new sauce," she says, and he allows himself to be dragged along.

 

"You know, back in Paris, I'd have just drunk myself through this. Staying home because of a stupid cold?" Adam shakes his head. "Hell, anyone staying home for anything less than two broken arms probably would've gotten their asses fired for being a wuss."

"I caught the flu, one time," says Tony.

"I got two broken ribs and a bruised wrist once. I was barely able to hold a knife."

Tony wants to say that he remembers, but he doesn't. A lot of things happened in Paris, a lot of days on which he looked at Adam and wondered what the hell he was doing, falling for someone so obviously unsuited to be the object of anyone's affection or sympathy.

It both hurt and helped that Adam never looked back at him.

"You are not as young as you once were," he says.

"No need to remind me. Not as pretty either, right?" Adam flashes him a smile. "So what happened?"

Tony shrugs. "I stayed home. I did not get fired. I came back to work. You really don't remember any of this?"

"They weren't my finest years," says Adam.

 

Tony's not sure that they were his, either. His finest years, spent as a maitre'd in a restaurant in Paris, pining after a terrible drunk with no sense of either responsibility or proportion? It sounds depressing.

He wondered sometimes what might happen if he'd made a move, if he'd waited for Adam to be well and truly drunk and simply dragged him back to Tony's apartment, Tony's bed.

It probably would not have been the best sex of his life. It would not have lived up to any of his fantasies, any of his dreams of what it might be like, to just for a few moments be the focus of that attention and focus Adam brings to his cooking, his food.

Much more likely it would have been awkward and all around horrible, and neither of them would have arrived where they are today: friends, still or at last.

 

Adam goes back to work on Day 6. Life goes back to normal.

Helene keeps giving Tony looks as if there's something he should be doing or saying, as if she knows Adam better than he does. It's a little annoying, but nothing Tony hasn't gone through before.

(Granted, Reece was more of a dick about it, and probably far less pure in his motivations. Still.)

"So I feel I owe you breakfast or something," says Adam.

"It's fine," Tony says. "No bother."

"You'd have done the same for anyone?" Adam snorts. "I don't think so. At least, I hope not. Call me jealous or something, but c'mon. This is me you're talking to."

"Yes," says Tony. "Exactly."

"So I was a hopeless screw-up in Paris, so what? People change. _I've_ changed. You want to spend the rest of your life being in love with me, that's fine. I'm just saying, you know, maybe give it a try, see if it works out, instead of just running to your psychiatrist and talk about your feelings?"

Tony closes his eyes. It's not - and in some ways, it is. Exactly what he's hoped for, from the first time he saw Adam cook - something with duck and oranges that went well together with a dry red.

"You mean, add my name to the long list of people you've fucked and trust that I will prove the one exception to your rule of never, ever starting a relationship you don't screw up in the next oh, two weeks or so?"

"Actually, pretty sure my record's at least six months. Seven, maybe," says Adam.

"Five. At most. And only because you were seeing another woman at the time, so you didn't talk to her as much as you would have otherwise. And there were one-night stands."

"And in spite of you knowing all of that, you're still in love with me. I mean, God knows why, but from where I'm standing, looks like you really don't have anything to lose. And who knows? It might actually work. Maybe all this time, I've just been waiting for the right guy to come along."

"Pigs might fly," says Tony.

Adam grins. "That's the spirit."

 

"I think you're a fucking idiot," Reece says, pouring him a cup of coffee. "Well, nothing new there, I suppose. But honestly, you're smart, sensible, likeable. I like you, and I don't like that many people."

"Thank you," says Tony. The coffee is the expensive kind, high-quality and bitter.

"You realize he's going to screw this up. It's Adam; he literally won't be able to help himself."

"He is not as he was in Paris."

Reece hesitates. Something's happened, between him and Adam. Tony's not sure what, or if either of them will ever tell him about it. "Well, none of us are, are we?"

"You are not as bad a friend as you would want me to believe, to either me or to Adam. So perhaps, you might believe that Adam, too, is not as poor a human being as he would have you or me believe."

"A bit of a stretch, isn't it? Still, I wish the two of you all the best. Come have dinner over here some time. Chef's invitation. I've been working on some new recipes, and I've simply been dying for someone to tell me they're shite."

"I'll tell him to behave," Tony promises. "He'll be polite."

Reece looks shocked. It's not an expression Tony's ever seen on him before. "Are we talking about the same Adam here?"

"Perhaps it is the power of true love," says Tony, feeling just a little bit smug.

"You mean you'll tell him to do it simply to screw with my head," Reece says.


End file.
